Just Compensation

by Robert N. Charrette

  After weeks of concern over the growing unrest in the nation’s capital, an alliance of extranational corporations with business interests in the Federal District took concrete steps today, announcing a “closed border” policy. Under the policy, effective at noon today, only persons affiliated with one of the allied corporations will be allowed access to any of the holdings or properties of that corporation. These entrance restrictions will effectively close such attractions as Telestrian Plaza Mall, the Saeder-Krapp Museum of Air and Space Technology, and the Renraku Conservatory and Arboretum.

  Stephen Osborne, president of Telestrian Industries East and chairman of the Alliance of Concerned Corporate Citizens, dismissed concerns about the impact of the new policy on business in Washington and put the policy in a sympathetic light.

  In a prepared statement, he said: “Though we are in effect standing on our corporate rights of extraterritoriality, our actions in this matter should not be taken as an indictment of the police forces here in Washington. We of the ACCC have nothing but admiration for the men and women who daily put their lives on the line to protect the good, honest citizens of Washington. Those good folk are operating under constraints that make their jobs extremely difficult, especially given current staffing levels. But the ACCC cannot stand idly by while members of our corporate families are in danger.

  “When a government cannot ensure peace and prosperity to its people, action must be taken. Current conditions in Washington are such that sane people must exercise caution. And so we of the ACCC are opting to exercise caution. We are doing what we can to ensure the safety of all members of our corporate families. Once the current crisis is behind us, we believe we can look forward to a day when all citizens can find greater prosperity in a more congenial atmosphere that is better suited to business. May that day come soon.”<<<<<

  8

  The pavement beneath Andy was cool, but the surface at his back had already started to warm in the raw morning light. The division of temperatures across his body was as sharp as the building shadow crossing him. He hadn’t been sitting, propped against the concrete wall, for long. That much he remembered, even if he didn’t remember how he’d gotten here—wherever here was. There was a buzz in his head, rattling his nerves. The sun had hurt his eyes in his first, brief attempt to orient himself, and he hadn’t seen anything useful before shutting them again. He wasn’t quite ready to try again. He could smell that this wasn’t a nice place, and the restive skitterings he could hear told him it wasn’t the sort of place where he should spend much time. He ought to get his muzzy thoughts together and get on with things.

  The feather-light touch of probing fingers told him he’d waited too long.

  Flailing arms and legs, he tried to simultaneously brush away whoever was accosting him and get to his feet so he could run. His assailant, a scruffy streetrat, fell away from Andy as he stood, apparently as frightened as Andy.

  “Should have checked.” squealed the streetrat in a shrill voice. “Should have checked! I told you we should have checked.”

  Andy looked around frantically, afraid the groper had friends. But there was only the one streetrat, and he stood between Andy and the alley’s mouth. The man was short and thin, and his clothes were a collection of rags so ratty that Andy wasn’t sure how many layers the man wore, let alone what the garments had once been. He was festooned with bits of bone, and tufts of gray and black feathers, and small bits of sparkling things all tied with cord and thong. Some even hung from his greasy dreadlocks. Fetishes, Andy realized. The man rattled as he waved his arms to deny his attempt to roll Andy.

  “No harm, no harm.” he squeaked.

  It was Andy’s own plea. Trying to crank down his own fear reaction, he said nothing. If no violence was forthcoming, that was fine by him—it wasn’t like he was armed and ready. His head hurt, but the droning buzz appeared to be a fault in the feedback loop monitoring the prelim work for his replacement eyes. His headware wasn’t fritzed, but as cyber mods went, headware wasn’t useful in a fight, fully operational or not. Even if he’d had combat cyberware, Andy wouldn’t have known how to use it. So he watched the streetrat watching him, and wondered what he would do if the scruffy little man decided to attack him after all. It was possible. The man’s beady eyes were fastened on Andy, and his expression was avid beneath the grime of homeless life.

  “You’ve been made strange.” the streetrat said.

  Strange was what this scuz was.

  “A shadow is cast over you.” the streetrat said. “Yes, a shadow. Clouding your mind it is. A strange spell that I do not know, and strong. Harmonious, though. A shaman maybe, but one I do not know.”

  Spell? Shaman? Could the streetrat’s talismans be real? If the scrawny little man was a real magicker, Andy was out of his depth. Who was he kidding? Andy was out of his depth no matter what the streetrat might be.

  “Who could it be?” the maybe magicker asked. “Who, who? Who did this to you?”

  Andy realized he didn’t know. Neither name nor face came to mind when he thought about it. Vaguely, but only vaguely, he remembered that the spellcaster was a woman. The sweet tones of her voice were his clearest recollections, but he couldn’t remember what she d said. Still, he knew she’d been in his home, at the Telestrian East complex, and that she hadn’t belonged there. Neither she nor her friends had belonged there.

  Her friends? There had been others with her, but he couldn’t remember their faces or names either. Shadowrunners. He wasn’t even sure how many there had been. It scared him not to be able to remember. What else had she done to his mind? He was sure something had been taken from him. He remembered a machine and a troll. Or was it an ork? Someone had jacked something into his head.

  “Wandering in body as well as mind. Far from turf.” While Andy’s mind had wandered, the streetrat had shuffled close. Grimy fingers plucked at Andy’s lapel, tugging at his corporate affiliation pin. “You are lost, yes?”

  Andy felt that way, but somehow it didn’t seem safe to admit it to this scuzzy specimen of streetlife, magicker or not. He’d at least be able to locate himself physically wherever the shadowrunners had dumped him; all he had to do was find a telecom. But mentally? That depended on what the sorceress had done to him. Which was what? It didn’t seem to be much; he just couldn’t remember any details about the shadowrunners. Was that so bad?

  “Lost now, but not forever.” the streetrat said. “With others you run. Blood bonds and magic. Strong magician by your side. Could be you’ve met who you should. Perhaps a good morning this is, if a hungry one.”

  Crazy words. How much did this creepy guy know? Had he seen the shadowrunners dump Andy? Did he know them? “Blood bonds?”

  “Magic?”

  “Met who you should?” It all sounded more than a little crazy. “What are you talking about?”

  “A karma.” he said, nodding eagerly. “I can taste it. Yes, a karma you have.”

  Yeah, right. If Andy had a karma, it was getting skinned alive by both his mother and Russ. What the hell did this ratty little guy know about karma? “Are you supposed to be some kind of soothsayer?”

  “Soothsaying? Bunk, junk, and nonsense for simpletons and fools. Me? I am a shaman. My totem is strong in these parts.”

  A shaman? The guy looked like a homeless derelict. “If you’re a shaman, what’s your totem?”

  “Mother never teach you manners?” the self-proclaimed shaman said indignantly.

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize it was so personal.”

  “Personal, yes. Very personal. Ultimately personal. What else would it be?” The shaman gave a snort. He ran a grubby hand beneath his nose, inspected the result, and wiped his hand on his sleeve. “Forgiven already. I know better than to run counter to karma. Learned my lesson long ago, I did. Go with the flow, say I. Dig in claws and take the ride. Karma can’t be denied. Okay, say I. Find a hold and cling. There’ll be scraps aplenty for all at the end.”

  “I really think I
ought to be going.”

  “Okay.” The streetrat stepped out of the alley and onto the deserted sidewalk. “Where to?”

  Andy edged his way to the sidewalk while the opportunity presented itself. “I’m going home. I don’t know about you.”

  “Call me SpellMan, one word, capital M.”

  “Nice to meet you, SpellMan. Glad we had the opportunity to talk.” Andy backed away as he talked. “I’m sure you have a lot of shaman stuff to do, so why don’t you get to it, and I’ll just be running along.”

  Andy spun, ready to make his words literal, when SpellMan called out, “Gonna need nuyen for Metro, Andrew Walker.”

  Andy froze when the shaman called his name. He looked back over his shoulder. SpellMan was holding up a credstick. Andy’s? The casing was in Telestrian colors and it had the Cyberdyne crest. The shaman scuttled forward and, to Andy’s surprise, handed him the credstick. It was Andy’s.

  “Nice new deposit.” SpellMan smiled, revealing sharp, discolored teeth. “Very nice. Very fresh. Plenty to treat a friend to food.”

  Andy thumbed the credstick’s recognition pad and dialed up his balance. His account showed substantially higher than it had been. Not only hadn’t the shadowrunners robbed him, but they’d left him with more money than he’d had before he met them. Maybe they weren’t as bad as they’d seemed. “How’d you know about the deposit?”

  The shaman winked. “Survival skills.”

  Without a reader and authorization codes, the credstick wasn’t supposed to respond to anyone but Andy. “You’ve got a reader tucked among those fetishes, don’t you?”

  “You were in a hurry.” SpellMan hooked an arm around Andy’s and tugged to get him started. “Let’s go. Where we going, by the way?”

  Andy shrugged his arm free, but started walking. This part of the city seemed deserted, and he saw from a street sign that they were in Southwest, on the corner of C and Third Street. They couldn’t be too far from The Mall. That big cross street ahead had to be Independence. At least he hoped so—Independence bounded The Mall. He wanted to get away from these seemingly dead office buildings and their rattling, deficient mechanical systems. They didn’t offer any succor from this weirdboy streetrat, but people would. There would be more people around the museums and monuments; a crowd, or even one police officer, would offer Andy a chance to scrape loose of the dirty shaman.

  The street was Independence. The vehicle traffic was nonexistent, so they crossed right away. Unfortunately the pedestrian traffic was light, and all the people looked more like SpellMan than Andy. He hadn’t realized how few people would be downtown so early on a Sunday. It wouldn’t be as easy as he thought to lose SpellMan. Andy’s eyes fell on the

  Saeder-Krupp Museum of Air & Space Technology. It was too early for the museum to be open, but its presence reminded him of other things. He smiled, envisioning the Metro entrance about half a kilometer past it. SpellMan had given Andy back the means to use the transportation system. Andy doubted that SpellMan had a System Identification Number, and the SINless weren’t welcome on public transportation. The Metro would be Andy’s way not only out of the downtown, but out of SpellMan’s reach as well. Eager, he started walking faster.

  Andy didn’t get half a block before SpellMan tugged at his sleeve, bringing him up short. “Wait. Will you not acknowledge this monument to a dominant force in shaping your past?”

  Andy was puzzled. “What kind of a question is that?”

  “A curious one.”

  “I’ll say.”

  They stood beside the Block, a two-story rectilinear solid of smoky gray material that filled most of the block next to the Air & Space Museum. The dark, tumbled-down shape of a rubbled building resided in the center of the Block, but it was hard to see—the substance of the Block was barely translucent. The only decoration on the Block was a band of light-colored, raised lettering affixed to the surface about three meters up. The words were in Latin, which Andy didn’t read, but he’d heard they said something about memory and the promise of justice. The Block was a monument, all right, but a weird sort. Andy had never paid much attention to it. Why did SpellMan think he had any connection to it?

  “What’s it got to do with me?”

  “You don’t see?”

  Andy looked at the Block. He’d seen it before, of course. How could anyone visiting The Mall miss it? But it had never meant anything to him. The Block didn’t look any different to him now except for the odd array of things nestled against it. Andy saw piles of clothing, household and personal goods, pieces of furniture and vehicles, boxes and bundles with indeterminate contents, jars filled with what looked like dirt, and even envelopes and papers weighted down with rocks and chunks of concrete. To judge by its battered, rusted, or burned condition, some of the stuff was junk; but much was in apparently excellent condition. It was amazing all that stuff sat undisturbed. SINless derelicts like SpellMan could make use of the clothes, if nothing else.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t picked yourself up a new set of clothes.” Andy remarked.

  “I am not so foolish as to disturb the gifts of memory.” SpellMan said.

  “Gifts? From whom?”

  “Those who remember. They used to do the same at the Wall.”

  The Wall was a part of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Andy remembered reading about how people used to bring mementos of their lost loved ones and leave them at the wall. He’d never heard of anyone doing that sort of thing here. When did it start, and why?

  “This used to be a museum, didn’t it?”

  “That, and more. It was a place built to honor those people who were here before the Europeans came. It was built in the Fifth World and was not, it seems, meant to be a part of the Sixth World. A mistake, you think?”

  “I guess.”

  “But on the part of which World?”

  SpellMan grabbed Andy’s arm and, with surprising strength, dragged him nearer the Block.

  “Touch it.”

  The shaman spoke in such a commanding tone that Andy could do nothing but obey. Half expecting some sort of jolt when his fingers touched the surface, Andy felt nothing more than the cold hardness of the Block’s face. It was just some kind of superhard plastic, smooth and slick.

  “Spirits were raised here.” SpellMan said. “Terrible things. Some say they sleep here still, waiting. I’ve never seen them, but it could be so, it could be. Wisely, the mundanes feared what had been done here. Their response was crass, crude, rude, but effective.” He rapped his knuckles against the Block. “This mass of dead stuff seals the womb and makes a tomb.”

  “People are buried in there?”

  SpellMan nodded. “I hear the ghosts cry in the night. They cried last night, mourning their loss, and our loss, but they are hedged in by anger and hate and can do nothing.” SpellMan dug under his rags and pulled out a piece of chalk. He swiped it across the surface of the Block, but the mark he made faded nearly as fast as he made it. “A magic that is not magic. A legacy of the makers, that none should defile the purity of their hate. It is their shame, and our shame.”

  SpellMan knelt and tenderly lifted one of the abandoned offerings. Unwrapping the checkered cloth, he revealed an ornate buckle that looked as if it might actually be silver. “Yet it is defiled, in a way that such as they cannot understand. For in the heart of hate there is often love. Love binds too, and can lead us, blinkered, on the path to the future. We walk, we talk, we play games, but the future comes for us and will not be denied. We fight it sometimes, proving that we are fools. Happy fools sometimes, ignorant fools always.” He rewrapped the buckle and placed it gently back against the Block. “The dead mass that seals this place only promises the death of the struggle. It does nothing to make it happen.”

  Andy had thought the shaman strange before this performance, now he was sure the man was definitely weirded around the bend. He looked down the street to where the sign of the Metro entrance beckoned.

  “Look, I got to g
o now.”

  “Not your path.”

  “Yeah, well, there are people going to be wondering where I got to.” Andy started straight toward the Metro. The entry system would scrape the shaman off his back.

  The shaman sighed, and followed. As soon as they stepped into the street, the shaman’s mood became lighter. He chatted almost casually.

  “City’s not a place for the natural world,” SpellMan said, “not a place for most with my orientation. Shamans are rare here and most of us bond with the creatures man has corrupted. But not me. You don’t pick your totem, you know, it picks you, because you are already one with it. Makes you think twice about those bonded to corrupted totems, doesn’t it? What has Man wrought? But I’m here to tell you that Man has no hold on my totem. We get along without, nay, despite his interference. Prosper, we do. And we will. You can prosper, too. Not hard, really. Gotta know who your chummers are, gotta know the grease and the greed, and how to play them both for yourself. Find the cracks and hide in ’em.”

  Hiding sounded like a good idea to Andy right now. He found SpellMan’s good-natured advice as bewildering as his mystic pronouncements. In some ways, the seedy little shaman was more unnerving than shadowrunners who threatened your life. Andy wondered how he could ever have wanted to be a shaman. Shamans weren’t all like SpellMan, were they? Sam Verner wasn’t. Or was he? Verner was a shadowrunner, too, and the shadowrunners Andy had met hadn’t been like those he’d dreamed about; he remembered that much about them.

  The Metro stop and freedom from the babbling shaman were little more than a block away, just a little past the gallery and garden compound of the Smithsonian Castle. Andy walked a little faster, but when they reached the corner of the Freer Gallery, he stopped, stunned to see the source of the buzzing sound he’d been hearing since he awoke in the city had a source. He’d thought that it was some kind of mechanical noise pollution, the rattle of heavy-duty ventilators perhaps. Now, through the gap between walls and buildings at Twelfth Street, he saw the source of the sound.